skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I had a Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine from 1982 to about 1987 (and for one month, I ran Smalltalk on it rather than Lisp).

Yes, it was awesome compared to using a timeshared VAX (or whatever), but as fantastic as my 1108 was for its time and no matter how much I loved it at the time, I like my development environments today a lot more. Examples: development and debugging of both server side and client side code (GWT on client, something REST full on the server side) with IntelliJ Java debuggers open on both client and server code - hopefully you may only need this once a month but useful when you need it. Repl based development with a smart IDE (like Clojure in IntelliJ or Ruby in RubyMine). Interactive Scala worksheets in the Eclipse/ScalaIDE (sort of like Chris's Light Table).

In addition to a lot of NLP work on my 1108, I was also just getting into neural networks back then and my NN simulations ran like mollasses on the 1108. Any of my laptops are many orders of magnitude faster for just about anything I do than my 1108.
A solid understanding of math or any technical field combined with practical experience in programming, and a willingness to learn will get you quite far. Also a multidisciplinary background can be quite a strength.

For instance we're hiring developers at LiquidPlanner. We are doing some cool stuff with probabilistic scheduling/planning, which would really benefit from some more folks with solid math/stats backgrounds:

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/eng/3264718329.html

So yeah, I'd say finish up your PhD, enjoy academia, and don't worry, there will be jobs out there for you.
Streable - Software that visually organizes conversations in a natural way
Your right to resell your own stuff is in peril
De-stigmatizes? Why would there be any stigma against making company requests to a department that you don't report to?

Look the person in the face? If you're in any company over a hundred employees, you email IT to ask for your equipment and it appears. There is no face to face.

In small companies like mine, we just have a cabinet. You walk over and take out what you need. We don't worry about people reselling equipment because we don't hire thieves.
saturdays on HN ~ no text is too empty to make it on the front page!
There will always be nation-states. Always. Put ten strangers on an island and they will organically form a hierarchy and political alliances will happen. There will never be a government-less world as long as we're human.
For what it's worth, I have a B.S. in biochemistry which I would expect indicates some level of intelligence to potential employers. However, I have had a lot of difficulty even getting to the interview stage when I apply for programming positions. I've spent a lot of time learning on my own and studying the CS side of programming (i.e. algorithms/data structures) which expect is neglected by many late converts and even when I say this in my cover letters I rarely more any further in the interviewing process.

A math PhD may have better luck but my experience has been negative so far.
Yeah come to Ohio ya'all. At mid-$20k salaries, the only reason to be a developer over other jobs is that you have higher social status. Every single friend I have who didn't go to college is making $35k+ in factories or whathaveyou -- and no $50k college debt loan burden either.
You can also chain the .NET 4.5 installer to run inside a Windows Azure Web Role on deploy, but that is a bigger pain in the ass than a VM.

FYI .NET 4.5 will be supported in all roles later this month.
1. If you're not making consumer apps, Java is just fine...
2. If you are making consumer apps, trying to go native and put everything through a WebView is just dumb.
Business process API-ification: The LEGO promise fulfilled
As I mentioned in the text, I think they were the best in terms of usefulness.

Though you are right about the hindsight bias, there is no way to tell. Maybe, just like many human beings, I tend to glorify things I lost.
How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers
i.e. beware creating an email black hole.
Recording macros correctly and quickly is an art. Text objects help immensely, since they can handle a lot of edge cases in different places across your code.
I don't think you understand how currencies or economics work.

Currencies are by nature inflationary in a growing economy. This is a good thing, because inflation encourages spending and/or investment. Deflation is fatal to an economy: because the value of the currency will grow with non-use, deflation inhibits spending and investment.

Bitcoin's fatal flaw is that it is deflationary. At any given monent, you're better off not spending your bitcoins, because that same quantity of bitcoins will be worth more in the future.

Bitcoins other fatal flaw is that roughly half of all bitcoins mined thus far are held in the hands of the inventor of bitcoins and his closet buddies. They haven't been spending their bitcoins--but they're encouraging others to spend bitcoins as they are mined. This is close to (but not quite) the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
We (Wolfram|Alpha and Wolfram Research) hire a lot of math and physics PhDs -- although they need to have a pretty strong grasp of functional programming. Email me at taliesinb@wolfram.com if you're interested -- we work on a lot of fun and challenging problems.

As for myself, my degree is pure math, but I consider myself primarily a programmer. Funnily enough, reverse engineering a 3D graphics engine was how I first learned trigonometry and matrix math as a teen.
Though it is a more obvious supplement, I am surprised melatonin is not on here. Your body produces melatonin (often known as the sleep compound) naturally, and it regulates sleeping and circadian rhythm.

It is available OTC and is relatively safe to take. Don't take it every day and take a low dosage. I take it when traveling (to help with jetlag) and every once in a while just to help with sleep. It definitely puts you in a deeper sleep. Some people who take it even report more vivid dreams (and I would definitely agree).
Web API is actually built on a completely different HTTP pipeline than ASP.NET products. When it moved to the ASP.NET team, there were a number of changes made to make it feel more natural to ASP.NET devs. Hence the slight variations when you dig under the covers. The question we need to ask ourselves, is why would the ASP.NET team agree to continue to support a completely new HTTP pipeline.
I am grateful that I am able to make a lot of money doing something that is fun for me anyways, programming computers. However, a fool and his gold are soon parted. There are some programs best left unwritten, for any amount of money. And some programs worth no money, yet most valuable.

The freedom from work as we know it, is the dream that technology is meant to bring... to everyone. When I am 50, I hope that how much money I am making will be largely irrelevant due to advances in technology and society.
Except that this was not 'tossing a brick,' it was maybe knocking on a window to see what sound it makes, and the window then falling apart for no apparent reason.

There is nobody to blame for this, actually. Neither could the kid have known that this was bad (and the child-like curiosity is hardly something worth a punishment,) nor could the sysadmin really do anything to prevent it, except hang up a memo: please don't do that.

Though, in that case, you'd have some kids doing that over and over again out of a very different kind of curiosity.
Can you release the source code for the website? I know it's something the Umbraco community would really appreciate.
Wall Street tipster gets rich off IRS whistleblower program
A legitimate question: is it possible for Bitcoin to still gain traction even if no one profits? I mean, is there a scenario, sort of like social media and the Arab Spring, where people will run the risk and break the law to gain access? Perhaps in a hyperinflation environment like Zimbabwe a few years back? Or for that matter like Iran right now?
I wasn't imagining that they would cease to exist, just that they would lose a lot of their relevance/expediency/executive.
Creating a Cryptographic Hash Function
Investors can't rely on seeing their share of the current book value if a company fails. That would be a good lower bound on companies' market cap if they generally wound down and sold their assets in an orderly way, but few companies do that. Most continue operating until they literally can't and then the bankruptcy receiver has to dump all their assets in a fire sale. Sorry.
This is the most sexist thing I've read on HN in a while. I can't down vote you, but I hope someone else does.
Would be interested in knowing more detail on this thanks - I had a quick look at their website previously, and their quick summary (which seems to sum the rest up well) is:

CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser.

NB this does not mean editing files in a filesystem but editing code in a browser (which could then be saved to a db or files by a web app/desktop app). Obviously it's possible to write such an app (like brackets), based on codemirror.

I'd be really interested in a codemirror which did manipulate source code files directly (and was not limited to html,css and js), but got the impression from their website that they offer lots of in-browser editing, but not an app which lets you interact with a local file system and edit files.

Did I get that wrong? If so would love to know more (or any other corrections you'd care to add).
Multiple projects is the biggest obstacle for me. It often means I can't gauge correctly what has the potential to be great project.

I need to get a set of criteria for what I'm aiming for & then stick to it.
Why Apple should acquire Nokia
I think ageism is "the" problem that you point out, because this is why people can't even get an interview after age 40, right?

There are employers biased against older candidates, I guess - though not near me, not to the point where I'm able to get all the good candidates aged 40 and up for peanuts, and it's not like I'm not searching, goodness knows.

But I think this is going to get better over time, as the masses of young programmers who entered the profession during and after the .com bubble age. In particular, you'll have more people in higher age brackets recommending each other.
I hate it.

The content of that exam is like a list of everything that's wrong with industry. Those are problems to be fixed, not things to set in concrete as the way it shall be henceforth.
Bitcoins do not have value anymore then a paper dollar has value. People are willing to accept it as payment knowing that others will also accept it as payment. You can (and I have) set up your own bitcoin system and get as many as you want. The only difference with that one and the main network is that the main network is bigger, and has a genesis block that people recognize as identifying it as the main bitcoin network.

If everyone changed their programs to recognize my genesis block as the correct one, then all of the main bitcoins will be worthless.
You'd be surprised at the house prices in Toronto or Vancouver (2 of the top tech cities in Canada). Yes, we're undergoing a housing bubble here, but $1M is the average price of a detached home in Vancouver...and that's for a 50+ year old hunk of junk (or 'crack shack' as we call it here).

One of the reasons that the housing bubble is starting to pop in Canada is that the incomes can no longer support the housing prices. We tend to have lower incomes than the US, but our houses are more expensive, cost of living is here, higher taxes, goods are more expensive, etc etc.

I wonder if SV incomes are higher simply because people expect them to be higher, or maybe there are more fundamentals to it.
Err on the side of action
Wait, so does this mean that if you can plan and execute a program of work which will take longer than a week, you're suddenly an "architect"?
I tried to find a video of Venkat's talk. So far the best I've come up with is a blog post about the talk: http://marxsoftware.blogspot.com.ar/2012/10/javaone-2012-sca...

I hope that a video of this talk will be posted.
One of problems of stack machines is that it is mostly impossible to build useful out-of-order stack machine (or even in-order multiple issue). Short or non-existent pipelines and low CPI of stack machines tend to offset this for certain classes of code (lots of branching and so), but cannot rival performance of modern register based designs for other classes of code (number crunching).
Given the article, the additional income over of a programmer over the average income earner should be, if saved carefully, enough money to cover the years between 50 and 69 to retire, if you so desire.
I think this more a matter of how it's changing not just China but any modern nation. If you have enough of the populace of the internet it's probably happening there and people are gonna be more wary of what they post online.
As I understand it, the vending machines were actually introduced as a way to track employee consumption of equipment[1] (at Facebook anyways). They were a response to an open kiosk where you could swing by and pick up hardware at will without any externally-enforced tracking of what you've taken. Assuming you use your own badge to dispense equipment, the vending machines are able to track your equipment usage. This allows IT departments to respond to consumption problems as needed, rather than putting a process in place that keeps you from being productive when your keyboard dies & the requisition personnel have gone home for the day.

I work at a small company--we don't have vending machines or IT departments. Instead, each employee has a company credit card and we submit receipts for our IT purchases. I'll admit that, knowing I can buy new stuff as needed, I'm less careful about my equipment. However, I also know that someone's looking at the receipts I submit & that knowledge has kept me from being wasteful. I'd imagine that the vending machine tracking motivates similarly.

[1] http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/06/facebooks-vending-mac...
I totally missed that, thanks. Tested and working now.
Depending on how you read the message and on the perspective you take, yes I did.

When I checked my text just prior to posting I thought it wasn't clear enough, so I added the "price" thing and posted. Oops.)

I though about editing and clearing up the original post but as it stands it can easily be figured out and doesn't impact the meaning.

EDIT: just posted a reply to define the vocabulary I used and the perspective I took.
There's a fine line between advice from someone who's been there and suffered in the trenches and a poser who's respouting the wisdom du jour he heard from another poser at a conference. It's often hard to tell the difference.

I waded carefully though this, expecting the usual noise, but surprisingly found lots of signal. This is excellent and already downloaded, printed twice, on my bulletin board, and in my binder. I need to go through it a few more times and make notes with a red marker as it applies to myself. What a handy barometer.

As a programmer, I love to hear unconventional technical wisdom that I know in my gut is true (3,38,47,53). The business advice was a little more conventional, but coming from OP, was heard in a new voice (too many to mention). Some of the "self-help" advice was fresh and interesting (9,18,29,36,72) while some was the same old stuff (41,77). Oh well, you can't have everything.

Thank you, OP! What a nice way to pay it forward. I know this will make a difference in my life, and probably for others too.
How To Email Busy People
Because unlike ASP.NET it can be self-hosted [1]. It wouldn't surprise me if ASP.NET was moved onto System.Web.Http in the future. Because ever since ASP.NET MVC they have been trying to hide the old System.Web under the new System.Web.Abstractions to support unit testing.

1. http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/hosting-aspnet-web-api/s...
In other words, it's also what the denizens at 4Chan do (specifically /b/) when they "Dox" someone.
Adjusting the Floating-Point Approximation in strtod()
> Currencies are by nature inflationary in a growing economy.

That depends on the supply of the currency though, no? If it's not expanding, but the economy is growing, it will cause deflation, which is indeed viewed as 'bad'. Right? Or am I missing something?
> and playing smoothly while the rest of the video loads, which Vimeo can't seem to do

I've always had at least sporadic problems with YouTube's buffering, especially at 1080p. I have a very reliable 50Mbit connection, but often I find that YouTube can't stream fast enough.

Usually it's only with certain videos; popular videos always buffer very quickly, which makes me think it's something to do with how they tune their CDN.
The New and Improved Developer Toolbelt - Google IO 2012
Hey, don't blame (plan # actual) on programmers' poor estimating alone. There are plenty of other reasons.

Here's are a couple of my typical instances:

http://edweissman.com/it-takes-6-days-to-change-1-line-of-co...

http://edweissman.com/dear-boss-for-a-programmer-10-minutes-...
Don’t Burn Funding For Version 1
3D Subdivision Surface Theory
Might be sexist but that doesn't (necessarily) make it untrue.
What financial regulations apply to bitcoin?
That they need to have an output for their ideas (coding, writing, designing, audio etc) To become a successful entrepreneur you have to push your ideas into a creative outlet. The more they master a route to producing/shipping the easier it is to get feedback & achieve recognition,sales,profit & ulitmately success.
Freenode channels are not a representative sample of any community. While people are often incredibly helpful, the channels are unmoderated (or moderated poorly, as you describe further down) and easily hijacked by people who have nothing better to do than give out poor, abrasive, opinionated advice. I've lost count of times when I came into a channel and asked a specific technical question, only to be flamed for a completely tangential reason, or receive 100% certain, 100% incorrect advice.
Unless the carrier blocks the update from going through. It took two months without a word from Verizon before my Galaxy Nexus finally got the Jellybean update, behind all the other Nexus phones.

At some point I imagine Verizon will simply stop supporting the phone, and the developer site will point to the last, 'carrier-blessed' OTA Android release.

If I can't trust a Nexus device on this platform, what can I trust?
There isn't a printable version of the article?
I agree about Zynga having the wrong model, but I do not think the things you mentioned are wasteful (other than repainting the dog). I do not know why people always assume that treating your employees well is some type of waste.

Think about this -- how much does a competent IT person cost per hour? How much does an engineer cost per hour? Some engineers cost up to $100 per hour once you add all the incentives and incidental costs.

Now what happens when an engineer has a broken keyboard in an old fashioned "frugal" company? He has to call tech support and he has to wait and he gets the perfect excuse not to do work. Tech support will not show up immediately, because this is a "frugal" company, so they do not have people in tech support just sitting around waiting for someone to get a broken keyboard. Oh no, they are frugal and have their support people's schedules full, which means that $100 an hour engineer gets to wait a couple of hours till the support person comes.

But in "wasteful" Zynga, that same engineer can go and replace his own keyboard for 5 minutes. That office supply vebding machine seems like a brilliant idea to me. Of course it is a vending machine, so it presumably keeps track of who takes what, so nobody can just take a bunch of stuff and resell it on the street.

The thing about the organic chips is a great idea too. It takes so much longer for anybody to go somewhere and buy something. And if a programmer goes out of the office he loses context, which means it may take him another hour to soak up the context of everything he was doing. Oh and if you eat unhealthy food or drink sugary drinks you can easily spend an entire afternoon in food/sugar coma. Of course one should not waste food regardless of how much they paid for this, but that can be solved by social measures.

I do not know why investors get their hearts warmed up by the suffering of their companies' employees but this is usually very counterproductive.

Google is very successful and is famous for their perks. Outsiders make fun of them, but Google management knows better. The better the perks, the more likely your valuable employees will stay in the office, avoid distractions and get more work done.
Might also be a good way to restock the public domain in the face of virtually unlimited copyright terms, if the holder of those rights became responsible to determine whether the cost of continued protection is worth it for a given work.
Interview with Dr. Kenneth Arrow
This comment was completely tongue in cheek; in all seriousness it was great to see them fix this so quickly.

Tell me that blog post didn't read like a security exploit announcement...

Anyways, as discussed, it never should've happened in the first place, but it sounds like from the comment threads that it was likely Framework related, so.... yeah, still prettty bad.
The most beautiful women use skirts.
| At any given monent, you're better off not spending your bitcoins, because that same quantity of bitcoins will be worth more in the future.

If I am hungry, I am better off buying bread than watching my bitcoin wallet's "value" increase on a computer screen.

A deflating currency might disincentivize spending, but it won't halt it. And what's so great about incentivizing spending?
That's why devs should scotty-factor their estimates.
Mob Chefs
Technically, it's the fault of the voters for hiring an incompetent person and their responsibility to fire him.
Why doesn't a cooking channel count? The definition of an educational channel can be a little broader.
By no means was I trying to say that professors aren't well rewarded, if that's how I came across, I didn't communicate very effectively.

My point was mainly that there aren't very many of those high paying positions relative to the number of graduates in the field. The ratio of graduates : professors is not too different than the ratio of CS grads : CS professors, but unlike CS, biology doesn't have nearly as many high paying positions outside of the professorial field. Even within education, many very good life scientists have a hard time obtaining tenure.

Most jobs outside of education pay somewhere around 60k, and there isn't a whole lot of room for growth unless you move up into management at a biotech firm. This is in contrast to CS, where a non-manager software engineer has a pretty decent opportunity to make 6 figures if he works hard enough and has a decent level of talent.
Implementation details. To the person using the products, they are nearly identical, with one being for web sites and one being for APIs. I see no reason why these should be separate. Please explain.
But "activities" are not "phases". You are always trying to get the requirements right, the difference is that some people get them while coding, and others before even start designing.
Yeah I hate that point too. I think a better solution would be to sit down with a co-worker and talk it through, rather than having to ask some god-like "architect" who knows everything about a system.
There's a big difference between a government-less world and one without nation-states. Also, for the majority of human existence nation states didnt exist.
The title is a bit hyperbolic, and would more accurately be "Check your spam box for important emails".